LONDON—For one night in November, the huge
Ferris wheel that dominates the London skyline
played host to the most ambitious and ethereal audio/video streaming event ever attempted. Back in
the real world, it could be the last event of its kind
for quite awhile.

Red Bull Music Academy teamed with satellite
broadcaster SIS Live, Channel4.com, You-Tube and Innovision to produce a rotating
array of simultaneous music tributes to
Britain’s club culture—accolades that were
quite literally “encapsulated” inside the
passenger pods of that massive spinning
wheel officially dubbed the “EDF Energy
London Eye.” SIS Live (Satellite Information
Services, Ltd.) likes to say the entire event
was “broadcast live” and distributed via
online streaming. In fact, technically speaking,
neither terrestrial signals nor satellites
were used in the making of this extraordinary
event… just a whole lot of fiber and
special RF allocations.

The 31 “legendary club nights” on Nov.
14 featured more than 100 DJs and artists
circling high above London on the banks of
the Thames. Even though SIS Live and Red
Bull had engaged in slightly less elaborate
technological feats in past years, this latest
venture still held more than its share of logistical
challenges. Especially tricky, multi-camera
pod feeds had to be produced from
each moving capsule and streamed live in
the U.K. on channel4.com and via YouTube
internationally. (Channel4.com is the online
arm of Channel 4, a public broadcaster
that both receives government funding
and airs commercials.)

SIS LIVE Special Cameras department Installed 60 miniature cameras in the EDF Energy London Eye
for the Nov. 14 event.

ROUTECAST IN A BOX
SIS Live first had to develop robust systems
to ensure its content’s safe delivery.
Thirty-one RouteCase systems were used
inside the capsules to produce video/audio
feeds which subsequently were transmitted
to the temporary production compound
located at ground level. Designed
and manufactured by SIS Live, RouteCase
is a portable HD production studio featuring
a 4-input vision mixer and 10-channel
audio mixer geared for tight spaces. In
addition to the multiple feeds emanating
from the moving Ferris wheel’s passenger
pods, Channel4.com featured an additional
live Webcast captured by two RF
cameras in order to mix highlights from
the passenger pods, a helicopter cam, and
other vantage points.

“The planning and preparation for this
event was meticulous, particularly owing
to the tight turnaround and intensive RF
and IP requirements,” said David Meynell,
SIS Live’s managing director. The technical
setup, he said, had “the unique ability
to deliver complex RF and special camera
solutions to produce live coverage from
technically demanding events such as
this.”

The 31 individual “broadcasts” were encoded
on-site by eight servers (installed
in SIS Live’s ground-based MPV1 vehicle)
and delivered by fiber for online streaming.
Since each of the sources was constantly
in motion on the big wheel, it was not possible
to use fiber to transfer the signals, per
se, which meant a comprehensive RF network
had to be deployed. Given the current
squeeze on suitable RF frequencies
available in the U.K., SIS Live said spectrum
management firm JFMG and OFCOM
(Britain’s FCC) proved helpful in releasing
additional bandwidth for the one-night endeavor.
Each of the eight servers provided
built-in redundancy and incoming-feed
monitoring. A 400 MB pipe was used to deliver
streams in HD (1080p).

MOVING TARGET
The logistical setup on the largest Ferris
wheel in Europe began many months
prior to Nov. 14, according to Innovision,
a British production agency specializing in
large public events, which had assisted Red
Bull from the earliest stages.(Per company
policy, Red Bull does not comment on
its own events.) According to Innovision
Technical Director Jaie Genadt, “First, there
was the stakeholder management. To get
the required permissions to establish [and]
install the equipment required to run an
event of this nature was a six-month process,
though we got there in the end.”

A total of 31 SIS RouteCases were prepped for the live broadcast.

The technical challenges on show night
were even greater since the London Eye
is a popular tourist attraction and closing
it down even briefly was not an easy task.
Pinpoint logistical planning was crucial
to, among other things, ensuring the crew
could load everything in the right order as
each capsule passed by and briefly stopped
at ground level.

“In only two hours we had to install 31
individual sound specs, the lighting, the
cameras, and the microwave link setups,”
Genadt said. “This operation was planned
to the minute with 150 technical crew
lined up at 1730 [5:30 p.m.] to gain access
to the capsules to set up. They were
then joined by the artists to sound check at
[6:30] and went live to 1.1 million viewers
at [7:30],” Genadt said.

WHAT GOES AROUND…
Meanwhile, SIS Live’s Meynell had said
“being central to the delivery of such a
high-profile event and working with multiple
parties is what SIS Live does best,” although
apparently it will be the firm’s last
venture of its kind. In late October, prior to
the Red Bull event, SIS Live announced it
would shutter its Outside Broadcast Division
by next Spring. The prime reason for
the drastic move: its failure to get its previous
BBC sports contracts renewed going
forward. An SIS Live spokesman confirmed
to TV Technology that the pending “outside”
shutdown could affect nearly 250
jobs and place on the sales block its mammoth
fleet of 18 HD/SD trucks and auxiliary
equipment.